Williams have difficult Friday in Malaysia

Williams spent their Friday in Malaysia evaluating new parts and evaluating the tyre compounds Bridgestone have brought to Kuala Lumpa this weekend.

Technical Director Sam Michael summarised the team’s day. “We spent today's practice sessions working on starts and evaluating a revised diffuser and front brake duct. The tyres appear to be quite stable again, something we’ve come to expect from Bridgestone. Tonight we’ll be focussing on extracting more speed out of the FW32 for qualifying. We had a mechanical problem on Nico’s car in the afternoon session, but the mechanics were able to fix it quickly.”

Rubens Barrichello was frustrated by the lack of performance the FW32 has shown so far this weekend. “That was a tough day for us. We carried out lots of interrogations on the car, but we feel that we aren't as quick as we should be so we have a lot of work to do tonight to find out why that is.”

Nico Hulkenberg, who had never driven around Sepang before arriving in Malaysia this weekend, was not happy with his Friday practice sessions. “It was a pretty difficult day, certainly not ideal. We had some technical issues on my car but I'm not quite sure what they are yet. We need to get our heads together to find some time for qualifying.”